


Make a true believer

by piggy09



Series: Shit, let's be spies [3]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, F/F, F/M, Sex murder and a conspicuous absence of rock and roll, Spies & Secret Agents, Where's Katja where you need her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 09:56:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,716
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2063742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piggy09/pseuds/piggy09
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are a lot of stories about Rachel Duncan.</p>
<p>Some of them may even be true.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Make a true believer

**Author's Note:**

> You know those cheap knock-off figures that are very obviously a figure for a different series but with a new coat of paint and a different name? Yeah, that's this fic and [RED](http://archiveofourown.org/works/411655), which I very highly recommend if you are in the Marvel fandom (and even if you aren't in the Marvel fandom).
> 
> Maybe wait to read it until after you've read this one, though. For sake of my pride. ;)
> 
> From a prompt on Tumblr:
> 
> "Child/teenage Rachel Duncan | Mimp: to speak in a prissy manner, usually with pursed lips. It can be set in a preexisting AU, if you want."
> 
> Of _course_ I choose Spy AU. Also: this has very little to do with the prompt. You've been warned.

Rachel Duncan is eight years old when her parents die. There’s a terrible fire in their suburban home, all neat picket fences and two-car garage (or at least Rachel thinks that’s how it goes, lies awake at night straining to hear the sound of lawnmowers, the taste of lemonade in the summer, neat picket fences, two-car garage). Rachel’s out selling Girl Scout cookies, and she comes back to find her house charred black and comes back to find herself an orphan.

Eight years old is too young for anything. Too young to be an orphan. Too young to be a spy.

That didn’t stop her.

* * *

(The director had taken one look at her, six years old and all big eyes in a solemn face, and – just for a brief moment – reconsidered. It’s a heavy thing, to make a child a weapon, even if that child was born and raised for that exact purpose. Even if that child had been raised on anatomical charts instead of fairy tales, the click of guns instead of lullabies. Still. Who wants to do that to a little girl?

Then the director thought about the Russians, thought about the Americans, thought about the Chinese, thought about the world and how it was such a big thing, to need such protecting from such little people.

Then he gave the go-ahead, and Rachel Duncan’s instructors put a gun in her hand.)

* * *

She kills a man for the first time when she is thirteen. She sleeps with a man for the first time when she is seventeen.

The first man is large and fat, stupid and slow. Rachel is none of those things. When Rachel was dragged kicking and screaming into the agency at age five, kidnapped on the playground, they put a knife in her hand. Sometimes she thinks she’s never let go of it. This is one of those times.

She stares at the body for a long time, afterwards, and waits to feel something. She knows from the computers she’s hacked her way into that you are expected to feel some sort of regret. Possibly anger. She knows some of the senior agents – not that everyone isn’t a senior agent, to Rachel-age-thirteen – have vomited. Some have shot themselves in the head.

Rachel doesn’t feel like shooting herself in the head. She feels like cleaning her knife, so she does. Besides that she just feels very calm, like a still pool of water all the way down.

(She will wait a long time to feel something, after a kill. If she concentrates very hard she can feel joy, and arousal. She doesn’t share this with anyone. She thinks it’s better to be at an unsettling center on the scale instead of all the way in the red.)

(She will kill a lot of people; she will forget most of their names, most of their faces. She will think that maybe she should remember this one – after all, he was her first.

She doesn’t. All she remembers is the absence of feeling.)

The second man is fairly unremarkable – he’s adequately endowed, and easily manipulated. That’s all that matters.

Alright, fine. He’s another junior agent, just about to turn eighteen in a week, and Rachel’s on a rare, rare battle high and her pulse is beating between her legs and everything seems so _easy_ , _so_ easy, and she leans forward and kisses him because she knows how to do it and she’s bored with waiting.

The sex is equally adequate. Rachel feels him come underneath her but rides his softening cock until she comes to orgasm; then she leaves him.

He’ll try and find her again later. She’ll do nothing to encourage him and eventually he will leave.

* * *

Some facts about Rachel Duncan:

  * Rachel Duncan was born in a test tube. She never had a mother or a father.
  * The first man she killed and the first man she fucked are the same person. She slit his throat and rode him while the blood got all over her. That’s the only way she can get off.
  * She has a tattoo of a knife on her thigh, so that she’ll always have one with her.
  * You can hear her crying at night, if you listen very closely.
  * She has a scar on her wrist from where she contemplated suicide and then thought better of it. This is why she always wears watches and bracelets.
  * Her father is alive, and retired, and living in Australia. When she finishes her last mission, she will go and live with him.
  * There is a cyanide pill in one of her back teeth. Someday she might bite down.
  * Her lipstick is made with the blood of people she’s killed.
  * She doesn’t know where she was born, she doesn’t know if she had a family, she doesn’t even know if Rachel Duncan is her real name. She doesn’t remember anything.
  * There isn’t a scar on her body. She’s never been hurt in a fight.
  * She lost her heart in a fight years ago; what’s in there now is just metal and mechanics. You can hear it ticking, if you listen very closely.
  * There is no last mission. She will never, ever stop.



* * *

She makes her first and only friend at age eight, when she’s still afraid. Everyone _tries_ to be kind, she thinks, but no one knows how to handle an orphan and she doesn’t feel right here, in the cold and sterile space.

(She will. In time, it’s the only place she’ll ever feel like herself.)

He’s one of the top men down in the labs, her age multiplied by itself and then added to (she was always good with sums, Before), and he’s the only one who is actually kind to her. He makes her little gadgets, hummingbirds with clockwork wings, a necklace from cogs. He makes her a toy gun that only fires jellybeans but she cries so hard when he gives it to her that he takes it away again.

He’s like a magician. Rachel tells him everything, all about her parents and how they were going to let her get a dog and tells him about her neighborhood, the sound of lawnmowers, the taste of lemonade in the summer. She spills out her heart to this man because he is kind and she needs _someone_.

…

He’s a traitor, turns out. Rachel learns this in a big meeting where she stands, eight years old with her spine straight as a metal rod, not a hair out of place in her blonde bob, in front of a panel of people who tell her to kill him. They tell her that while he was making her toys he was sending the designs for the _real_ toys off to people who will use them to hurt others. People are getting hurt, Rachel. Do you want to stop them?

She nods.

They don’t even give her a weapon. She walks, slowly, to the lab. Her stomach feels like an animal, squirming below her ribs. She thinks maybe she’s going to throw up. Her hands are very hot and there are tears wriggling their way to the corners of her eyes.

He dies underneath her, with her tiny eight-year-old hands around his throat.

Afterwards Rachel runs to the corner of his lab and vomits, over and over and over again, her arms wrapped around her ribs. Her hands are splayed open beside her, shaking; she doesn’t want to touch anything with them again, not ever, not ever ever.

(She paints her nails for the first time the very next day. When they are different colors her hands look different, and when her hands look different they are different, and when her hands are different they are not the hands that choked a man to death.)

She climbs into a metal cabinet and cries. Her mouth tastes like vomit and she can’t breathe through her own snot and she wants to go _home_.

They find her. They bring her back to her room and they stop pretending to be kind. She starts lessons, _real_ lessons, that week; while she is dissembling and reassembling a gun she does the same with her own mind, snaps off her home, slides her emotions out, reassembles herself as a gun. Guns don’t have feelings. Guns don’t love people.

She holds the pistol, splayed across her palms. She is eight years old and her hands do not shake. Not even a little.

* * *

(The director’s pen has been missing for a solid week when Rachel walks into the office. She’s holding it in her hands and the director is unsurprised, somehow.

“Rachel,” she says, “good to see you. Have a seat.”

The blonde looks at her, sits. She’s rolling the pen between her fingers.

“I’ve heard you and Sarah Manning are getting along,” the director says, idly marking up some paperwork – what she’s really saying is, _we know what the two of you are doing, don’t be stupid_. Rachel Duncan is not often stupid; the director hates to be proven wrong.

“Why,” says Rachel, simply, and the director gives her the credit of not asking _why what_.

(Why was I made like this. That’s the question, in case you are behind.)

The director sighs, makes a final flourish of pen (not nearly as good as her usual) on the paperwork, and looks Rachel in the eyes.

“We needed an agent who would be utterly and entirely loyal. We needed _you_ , Rachel. There wasn’t anyone out there like you. There will _never_ be anyone out there like you.”

“You’re wrong,” Rachel snaps, “Sarah Manning, Helena Manning, even Elizabeth Childs, they’re _just_ as good as me and they had—”

She stops. Control falls on her face like a slamming door. The end of that sentence hangs in the air between them – _families, childhoods, lives outside of_ this _. They had something, and I didn’t._

“Don’t be a child,” the director snaps back. She’s sucking in another breath but Rachel has yelled over her, “I _can’t!_ ”

There are tears in her eyes; her nostrils are flared.

“I _can’t_ be a child because I don’t know _how_. You put a gun in my hands when I was six years old and you told me it would make me better but it _hasn’t_. I’m the same as them!”

“I’m the same as them,” she says, like a low moan of pain, her hair disheveled, her chest heaving with breath.

“That’s not our fault,” the director says; she thinks she’s disappointed. “You were born for this, given every advantage. It’s not our fault you didn’t know what to do with it, is it?”

“You’re dismissed,” she says coldly, before Rachel can say anything else. There’s a scrape of chair legs against the floor as Rachel, presumably, stands; then a breath of air hits the director’s face a second before the pen, scraping just enough against the skin of her cheek to draw blood before it sticks, vibrating, in the wall.

(I could have hit your eye. That’s the message, in case you are behind.)

The director doesn’t look up until Rachel Duncan is gone.)

* * *

“What’s true, then?” Sarah asks from nowhere, her voice rusty from disuse. Rachel stops contemplating her ceiling and rolls onto her side; she can’t get over how Sarah looks in her bed, pleasantly disheveled, her hair falling over her arm in one long tangled wave. She’s leaning on one elbow to better look at Rachel, and her eyebrows are raised expectantly.

“Sorry?” Rachel says, politely.

“The stories,” Sarah says patiently, “I’ve heard ‘em, you’ve bloody well heard ‘em, which ones are true.”

Rachel stays silent for a second and then murmurs, “All of them.”

“Really,” says Sarah, somehow raising her eyebrows even higher and flopping back down onto her back. “Even the one about you havin’ bloody Elsa powers.” She reaches her hands towards the ceiling and wiggles her fingers, for emphasis.

“Yes,” Rachel says softly. “Even that one.”

* * *

She’s just hit puberty, and the chemicals they’ve injected her with roll with her cramps, leaving her shaking and sweating on the floor, curled up in a ball and completely alone.

Her sweat cools on her forehead. That’s the first sign.

Her tears freeze too, and slowly the ice spreads from her until she’s somehow shaking even harder, shivering her way out of her skin, so afraid she’s biting her lip until she tastes blood. What did they do to me. What did they do to me. What did they do to me.

The answer, apparently, is that it is a temporary serum designed to test the limit of the human body, designed to bring superheroes out of comic books and into reality. It’ll last a month. Tops.

She makes ice grow in a woman’s brain and she rubs frost from the creases of her hands and she watches her hair, her long dark hair, her pride and joy, turn blonde from the roots down.

At the end of the month she has found a million uses for icicles, her hands are permanently cold, and her hair is permanently blonde.

The remaining vials of the serum, and the formulas for it, are mysteriously lost. She doesn’t know how it happened, and she wouldn’t tell you if you asked. She cuts her hair short – claims it’s more practical that way – and gets on with her life. Stays indoors in winters. Accepts the nickname “Ice Queen” with a smile that says absolutely nothing.

(When she watches _Frozen_ , years later, Cosima’s feet in her lap and Sarah’s head on her shoulder and Alison and Beth bawling over Hans and Helena mysteriously and totally absent, she’ll start laughing high and hysterical and won’t be able to stop.

She locks herself in the bathroom and stares at her hands; when she looks at them, they get just the slightest hint of frost. Just on the tips of her fingers.)

* * *

The truth is this:

Rachel Duncan █████████ scientists ███████████████████████. ████████████████████████████████. They said it was ██████████, but they were lying. ███ truth █████████████████████████████████████ weapon. ███████████████████████████████, ███████████████████████████.

██████████████████████. Herself? ███████████████████.

█████████████████████████████ Sarah Manning ████████████████████████████.

██████████████████ standby.

She’ll understand, someday.

* * *

Two days after her first death, Rachel locks herself in the bathroom she’s been given and looks at herself in the mirror. Her eyes glitter darkly from her face, pale in its nest of long dark hair. Her hair is her pride and joy; it’s the only thing connecting her to her life, the only thing connecting her to Rachel █████, who died screaming when they took her from the playground. She was five years old and her favorite color was blue and she had just started first grade—

Thirteen-year-old Rachel sucks in a breath through her nose, puts the box of bleach on the sink, and raises the scissors.

While she cuts her hair she tells herself the story of Rachel Duncan, _Rachel_ Duncan, Rachel _Duncan._ Rachel _Duncan._ Rachel _Duncan_.

(She’s been listening to people from all over for years, now, and she has a stockpile of accents she’s been saving. She thinks she likes British, best, upper-class; people don’t mess with someone who sounds like that.)

(That’s a lie. They’ll tell her she talks _prissily_ , and she’ll take them down, one by one, all of them, cold, methodical.

Her accent will never slip. Not even one time.)

Rachel _Duncan_ was born in a test tube. She never had a mother or father. She doesn’t have feelings. She doesn’t love people. She was always blonde. She was always British. She doesn’t have a favorite color and she’s never known anything besides this, never known anything besides this, not ever.

Rachel Duncan stares at herself in the mirror, standing in a nest of long dark hair, the color of ash. She doesn’t know where it came from. Someone will have to clean it up; someone will have to be punished, for getting hair on her bathroom floor.

That’s not her concern. She stares at her eyes in the mirror; they’re as dark and cold and pointed as bullets.

“My name is Rachel Duncan,” she says, and feels like a phoenix.

* * *

Some lies about Rachel Duncan:

  * Rachel Duncan was hatched from a swan’s egg. She never had a mother or father.
  * Someday she is going to snap and kill Sarah Manning, because she doesn’t know how to separate killing from everything else.
  * She has a tattoo of a knife on her thigh. Sarah’s traced it with her tongue to feel Rachel shiver.
  * She runs Dunkin Donuts in her spare time, from her phone and in between killing people.
  * She can’t die. She’s tried. She always lives through it. There’s a scar on her wrist from a razor and a scar on her head from a bullet and she keeps trying, keeps trying, there’s blood all over her hands and she’s drowning in it.
  * The scientist in the lab was her father. Her father was a traitor.
  * Loving Sarah and Sarah’s friends is the most terrifying thing she’s ever done.
  * Her lipstick is just lipstick. It’s not poison, or blood, or even that expensive. It’s generic drugstore brand, because she likes knowing she’ll be able to get a tube wherever she is.
  * She remembers everything.
  * She has a secret weakness for black licorice and Flamin Hot Cheetos. Just not at the same time.
  * Nobody’s made a Black Widow movie yet because they’re terrified of upsetting her.
  * She doesn’t want to die.



* * *

It’s normal, now, for Rachel to be sucked into the jetstream of Sarah’s friend group and to blink and find herself in a bar, in a movie theater, in someone’s apartment, with a bottle in her hand. Social interaction is strange, sometimes.

Tonight they’re in Elizabeth’s living room, all gunmetal greys and blues, and Alison’s ranting tipsily about her mother, how she _never_ supported Alison for wanting to _help_ people, she just wanted her to be a doctor and make money but what did _she_ know—

Rachel’s having trouble concentrating, though; Sarah made a low groan the second Alison launched into the rant that said she’s heard this story a million times and now she’s focused on where her hand’s intertwined with Rachel’s, playing with their fingers absentmindedly where they’re laced on the cushion of Beth’s couch.

“You two are giving me diabetes,” Beth groans, throwing a pillow at them – it clashes with the décor, knitted in cheery pinks and greens.

“Hey,” Alison sputters, stopping mid-rant to glare, offended, at Beth, “I _made_ that!”

“You sure did,” Beth says brightly, “and thank you for such _excellent_ ammo.”

“You could probably weaponize that,” Cosima says lazily, swirling her glass of wine without much thought and staring into space with a look Rachel’s come to anticipate – a look that means Cosima is thinking of _weapons_.

“No,” Sarah groans, running the hand that isn’t holding Rachel’s through her hair, “no, no, we’re _not_ makin’ a bloody cushion cannon, Cos.”

“Fine,” Cosima says, spreading her hands wide in a display of surrender, “fine, I’m cool, no cannons, totally chill. So: you got any better ideas?”

There’s a beat of silence. Then Beth says, slowly, words ringing with some sort of ceremony Rachel doesn’t understand, “What do you miss about before?”

More silence, and Rachel realizes slowly that this is some sort of game, something they must have done more than once. Before Rachel was around. Back when Rachel spent all of her time staring into space, instead of only some.

“Children,” Alison says, softly, then escalates. “I miss seeing kids, there are _never_ children around. Not that – not that I’d want—”

“I get it,” Sarah says, shooting a sad and lopsided grin to the girl across the room. Alison smiles back and then looks at Beth.

“I miss track,” Beth says, leaning back, staring at the ceiling. “Not running to stay in shape, y’know? Just…running. Not the same ten floors underground.”

Unspoken: _not the same anymore_ , not the same as it was. Before.

“My dog,” says Cosima, grinning, “his name was Newt, he was, like, my best friend.”

“Newt?” says Sarah, eyebrows raised, and Cosima rolls her eyes, says, “Short for Newton, okay, don’t judge.”

Then she looks expectantly at Sarah and Sarah leans forward, stares at the ground with her brow furrowed. Rachel wonders what she’s thinking about.

Then she leans back again and says, “School, can you believe it.” There’s a simultaneous groan and Sarah rolls her eyes and grins with a scoff and says, “seriously, I wasn’t even a very good student. Skipped class every other day, yeah? I just miss…”

She gestures vaguely with her free hand and says, “The other kids. The _future_ , knowin’ there was gonna be a future, knowin’ I could be a bloody cop or vet or whatever the hell I wanted if I worked for it.”

Then she turns and looks at Rachel, says, “You?”

“The sound of lawnmowers,” Rachel says dreamily, before she’s even thought about it, “the taste of lemonade in the summer.”

“Suburbia?” Alison says faintly, like she’s surprised, and Rachel says “The sou—” before she realizes what she’s saying and then closes her mouth with a faint _snap_. It’s beating at the back of her brain, the roof of her mouth, _the sound of lawnmowers the taste of lemonade in the summer_ and what else does she remember? What else does she know?

She thinks she’s still staring into space but she’s giving herself a headache from how hard she’s trying to remember anything, _anything_ , what did the lemonade taste like _the taste of lemonade in the summer_ what did her mother’s face look like _she was eight when her parents died_ what did her father’s face look like _her house charred black_ what was –  _the sound of lawnmowers_ what was – _the taste of lemonade in the summer_ what _neat picket fences_ was _two car garage_ her _the sound of lawnmowers_ father’s _the taste of lemonade in the summer_ name?

She has the memories, but not the feeling behind them, and the memories aren’t even memories just words beat-beat-beating—

“Excuse me,” she says faintly, drops Sarah’s hand like it burns, walks in calm neat steps to Beth’s bathroom.

Then she throws up.

* * *

A truth is this:

Rachel Duncan █████████ parents. ████████████████████████████ experiment ████████ weapon███████, ███████ memories ████████████████████████; ███████████ triggers █████████████████████████████████. In her mind █████████ normal █████████████████████████████████████████ tragic, unexpected, and ████████████████.

In reality, ███ “███████████████” ████████████████. ████████████████████████████████████████████████████ – unexpectedly so – ███████████████ normal ██████████████████████████████████.

It’s easier for everyone if ███████████████████████████████████████. If she ███████████████████ born, ████████████ made.

She’ll understand, someday.

**Author's Note:**

> I can sell you lies  
> You can't get enough  
> Make a true believer of  
> Anyone anyone anyone  
> I can call you up if I feel alone  
> I can feed your dirty mind  
> Like I know like, like I know, what you want
> 
> Anyone anyone anyone  
> Anyone anyone anyone  
> Like I know, like I know, what you want  
> Like I know, like I know, what you want  
> \--"Lies," CHVRCHES
> 
> I will say at least one of these stories is true. 
> 
> Did you enjoy the fic? Please leave kudos + comment! Thank you for reading!


End file.
